News, Views and Analysis

G20 investigation: RCMP spies vs conspirators

An RCMP-led Joint Intelligence Group comprised of federal, provincial and municipal police infiltrated activist groups prior to the G20 and Vancouver Olympics in what they call “one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history”.

Constable Bindo Showan of the Ontario Provincial Police, one of the two principal undercover Ontario spies, is a stunning example of that intelligence at work.

Earlier this fall, Showan told the court about how he attended a meeting prior to the Toronto summit. There, a protest-planning group that included several of the 17 main G20 defendants was discussing whether to lend their support to a First Nations rally.

Adam Lewis, one of the 17 accused conspirators in the G20 case, interjected, “Kill whitey!” The group chuckled.
Lewis, like all but one of his co-accused, is white.

When a Crown lawyer asked the officer what he thought Lewis meant, Showan said in complete seriousness, to “kill white people.”

Apparently we do not have the right not to be spied and reported on by morons or covert operatives pretending to be morons.

“The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville … will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power …

“The important commonality is that these ideologies … place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society.

In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First Nations’ resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc.”

RCMP records suggest that the reconnaissance continues. Report logs indicate at least 29 incidents of police surveillance between the end of the G20 summit and April 2011 — more than nine months after world leaders departed Toronto.

The same document indicates that the RCMP-led intelligence team made a series of presentations to private-sector corporations, including one to “energy sector stakeholders” in November 2011.

Good to know.

After millions of dollars and 70,000 pages of Crown evidence, conspiracy charges have been dropped against the 17 activists held in jail or under house arrest for the last 18 months, but 6 of them will serve jail time for counselling mischief, with an additional charge of counselling to obstruct police leveraged against Alex Hundert and Mandy Hiscocks.